By Brian Lowry | Updated on Oct 06, 2026 at 11:00 AM
Paramount played a key role in the movie Sunset Boulevard , as fading screen star Norma Desmond yearned to return to that nigh-magical dream factory behind those ornate studio gates.
But things have changed since director Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic. That’s why it was strange to see the flurry of outrage over news of David Ellison’s decision to do away with the Paramount and Warner Bros. names and rechristen the combined company Skydance once the merger is complete. The reaction feels like grasping for a black-and-white past in what’s become a vivid-color, Imax, a-la-carte age.
The announcement came days before the merger is expected to close on Oct. 6, and beyond the complaints from ordinary users online, the name change was also derided by media analysts. The Daily Beast seized on Ellison’s perceived coziness with President Donald Trump while mocking the vanity of the Skydance name, which is Ellison’s 20-year-old moniker. On X, media reporter Justin Baragona noted the decision to “ erase ” two of Hollywood’s “most storied names.” And the Los Angeles Times’ Mary McNamara lamented what’s being sacrificed on the altar of Ellison’s “Frankenstudio,” which, frankly, might be the most accurate name of all.
As many have pointed out, there are good reasons for concern and handwringing over the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Chief among them is the potential loss of thousands of jobs by laying one studio on top of another — creating a kind of reverse Noah’s Ark, slashing costs by discarding duplicative positions.
The name change, however, shouldn’t be high on the list of grievances. Putting it there conflates respect for history with brand value in the 21st century. Simply put, believing that those storied names mean much to modern consumers sounds like fuddy-duddy thinking. The major studios have grown and diversified since the early days when they mostly just distributed movies, then segued into television. (Disney, with its iconic family brand and theme parks, remains an outlier in possessing a clear image of what the name denotes and a strong emotional bond with fans.)
Increasingly, it’s the labels and franchises under those sprawling studio umbrellas that possess cachet with consumers. Disney’s Pixar has faced its own box-office struggles, but its trademark lamp still denotes ambitious animated storytelling. HBO is another name that signifies prestige television. Warner Bros.’ previous management team learned that lesson the hard way when they changed HBO’s streaming site, HBO Max, to just Max, before sheepishly retreating and restoring HBO to its name last year.
Yet while those logos serve as marketing shorthand, in an age of media abundance, the most valuable role an entertainment brand can play is to help audiences decide what to watch — not commanding allegiance because of the name. That distinction matters.
The big-box store of Netflix, which lays out a buffet of content then tries to algorithmically tailor the menu to individual preferences, is an obvious example. What is a “Netflix series”? A thousand different things, on a platform people surf by default, looking for something to watch based on what they’ve liked before.
Still, we’ve seen the limits of this modern evolution. Streaming services constantly wrestle with churn, as people cancel and re-subscribe depending on what’s available. Despite the power of big curators, bonds with content are just as often forged now through other avenues. Look at Backrooms and Obsession , the indie horror movie hits whose 20-something directors built followings not at studios but via YouTube , emerging as the latest proof of screenwriter William Goldman’s famous adage that in Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything.”
Indeed, even super-powered brands can’t always guarantee an audience. Marvel, after a dominating box-office run through the 2010s, experienced the limits of slapping its logo on second-tier properties, yielding several disappointments after 2019’s Avengers: Endgame that have ratcheted up pressure for this year’s sequel.
More recently, the just-released movie Digger landed with an epically dull thud — an ill-timed flop from Warner Bros. on the eve of its corporate wedding — as moviegoers flatly rejected the Tom Cruise-led project.
The message? Hits can come from anywhere. There are few sure things, and even marquee players are only as good as their last batch of movies and television shows, as people find and embrace content in ways that challenge old assumptions and orthodoxy.
From that perspective, “Skydance” doesn’t mean much less than the names it replaces — perhaps especially to younger audiences that will determine the future. (If there’s a silver lining to the decision, at least media reporters can stop entertaining themselves by coining mashups like ParaBros and WarnerMount.)
Ellison has made questionable moves in orchestrating this massive acquisition, from saddling the company with a vast amount of debt to agreeing to release at least 30 movies a year in theaters — a promise few students of mergers past believe he’ll keep. But clinging to tradition, stock symbols, or nostalgia won’t be what saves Hollywood as the gates close on its traditional gatekeepers.
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